Posted tagged ‘Europe and Islamist terror’

(The suicide watch can be canceled. Formerly Great Britain and Much of Europe appear to be dead. — DM

Britain — in spite of the Brexit referendum and even though it is more undermined by Islamization than most other European countries — is fully imbued with a European, defeatist state of mind that corrodes its existence and is present throughout Europe.

British political commentator Douglas Murray writes in his important new book, The Strange Death of Europe: “Europe is committing suicide. Or at least its leaders have decided to commit suicide”. He then wonders if the Europeans will agree to go along with what is happening. For the moment, it seems, the answer is yes.

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In spite of three attacks in three months, Britain does not seem to be choosing the path of vigilance and determination. June is not even over but the media barely talk about terrorism any more.

Then, in the early hours of June 19, a man who acted alone drove a van into a crowd of Muslims leaving Finsbury Park Mosque in London: the main “threat” to the British right now was soon presented in several newspapers as “Islamophobia”.

Decolonization added the idea that the Europeans had oppressed other peoples and were guilty of crimes they now had to redeem. There was no mention of how, throughout history, recruits to Islam had colonized the great Christian Byzantine Empire, Greece, Sicily, Corsica, North Africa and the Middle East, most of the Balkans and eastern Europe, Hungary, northern Cyprus and Spain.

While most jihadist movements were banned by the British government, more discreet organizations have emerged and demurely sent the same message. The Islamic Forum for Europe, for example, depicts itself as “peaceful”, but many of those it invites to speak are anything but that. The Islamic Human Rights Commission uses the language of defending human rights to disseminate violent statements against the Jews and the West.

London, June 5, 2017. A minute of silence is held at Potters Field Park, next to the City Hall, to pay tribute to the victims of the London Bridge jihadist attack three days before. Those who came have brought flowers, candles and signs bearing the usual words: “unity”, “peace” and “love”. Faces are sad but no trace of anger is visible. The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, a Muslim, gives a speech emphasizing against all evidence that the killers’ ideas have nothing to do with Islam.

A few hours after the attack, Britain’s Prime Minister Theresa May also refuses to incriminate Islam, but dares to speak of “Islamic extremism”. She was immediately accused of “dividing” the country. On election day, June 8, her Conservative party lost the majority in the House of Commons. Jeremy Corbyn, a pro-terrorist, “democratic socialist”, who demands the end of British participation in the campaign against the Islamic State (ISIS), led the Labour party to thirty more seats than it had earlier. In spite of three attacks in three months, Britain does not seem to choose the path of vigilance and determination. June is not even over but the media barely talk about terrorism any more. A devastating fire destroyed a building in North Kensington, killing scores of residents. Mourning the victims seems to have completely erased all memory of those killed in the terrorist attacks.

Then, in the early hours of June 19, a man who acted alone drove a van into a crowd of Muslims leaving Finsbury Park Mosque in London: the main “threat” to the British right now was soon presented in several newspapers as “Islamophobia”.

The United Kingdom is not the main Muslim country in Europe, but it is the country where, for decades, Islamists could comfortably call for jihad and murder. Although most jihadist movements were banned by the British government, more discreet organizations have emerged and demurely spread the same message. The Islamic Forum for Europe, for example, depicts itself as “peaceful”, but many of those it invites to speak are anything but that. One was Anwar al-Awlaki, who for years planned al-Qaeda operations until he was killed in Yemen in 2011 in an American drone strike. The Islamic Human Rights Commission uses the language of defending human rights to disseminate violent statements against Jews and the West.

The most flamboyant radical preachers have all but disappeared. The most famous among them, Anjem Choudary, was recently sentenced to five years and six months in prison for his open support of the Islamic State, but hundreds of imams throughout the country continue similar work. No-go zones, forbidden to the “infidels”, continue to grow in big cities, and sharia courts continue to dispense a form of justice parallel to, but different from, the national one. Khuram Shazad Butt, one of the three London Bridge terrorists, could raise the Islamic State flag in front of cameras, be the main character of a documentary on jihad in Britain and still be considered “low priority” by the police. Salman Abedi, the Manchester killer, travelled to Libya and Syria for training before he decided to act; he could easily cross borders without being stopped.

The most famous of Britain’s radical Islamic preachers, Anjem Choudary (pictured holding the microphone), was recently sentenced to five years and six months in prison for his open support of the Islamic State, but hundreds of imams throughout the country continue similar work. (Photo by Oli Scarff/Getty Images)

Attempts to sound an alarm are rare, and quickly dismissed. Left-wing British politicians long ago chose to look the other way and indulge in complicity. Conservatives did not do much to help, either: after the uproar sparked by Enoch Powell’s “Rivers of Blood” speech in 1968, British conservatives avoided the subject and became almost as complacent as their political opponents. In 2002, while portraying Islamism as the “new Bolshevism”, Margaret Thatcher noted that “most Muslims deplore” terrorism. She described the “jihadist danger” without saying a single word on radical Muslims spreading Islamism in her own country.

In 2015, David Cameron said, “We need far more Muslim men and women at the head of British companies, more Muslim soldiers at the highest command posts, more Muslims in parliament, Muslims in a position of leadership and authority”. He did not mention those who were joining jihad in London even as he was speaking.

When he was at the head of Britain’s UKIP party, Nigel Farage said that there is a Muslim “fifth column” in the country. He was ferociously criticized for these words. Paul Weston, chairman of the GB Liberty party, was arrested by the police in 2014 for reading in public a text on Islam written by Winston Churchill. One wonders how Churchill would be regarded today.

Britain — in spite of the Brexit referendum and even though it is more undermined by Islamization than most other European countries — is fully imbued with a European, defeatist state of mind that corrodes its existence and is present throughout Europe.

At the end of World War II, Europe was exhausted and largely destroyed. The idea that prevailed among politicians was that it was necessary to make a clean sweep of the past. Nazism was described as the rotten fruit of nationalism and military power, and the only war that seemed to have to be waged was a war against war itself. Decolonization added the idea that the Europeans had oppressed other peoples and were guilty of crimes they now had to redeem. There was no mention of how, throughout history, recruits to Islam had colonized the great Christian Byzantine Empire, Greece, Sicily, Corsica, North Africa and the Middle East, most of the Balkans and eastern Europe, Hungary, northern Cyprus and Spain. Cultural relativism gained ground. The anti-Western revision of history gradually gained ground in media, culture, politics and education.

Immigrants from the Muslim world arrived in increasing numbers. They were not encouraged to integrate or respect the countries to which they came. In school, their children were told that European powers had misbehaved towards the Muslim world and that Muslim culture was at least as respectable as the Western one, maybe even more

When violence erupted and riots took place, European politicians chose to placate them. European populations sometimes tried to resist, but they were constantly told that criticism of immigration and Islam is “racist”. They were intimidated, pushed to shut up.

What is happening now in the United Kingdom and elsewhere in Europe is merely a continuation.

European political leaders all know that radical Islam has swept throughout the continent, that hundreds of Muslim areas are under Islamic control, that thousands of potential jihadists are there, hidden among the immigrants and ready to murder, and that the police are overwhelmed.

They know that radical Islam has declared war on the Western world and that it is a real war. They see that they are prisoners of a situation they no longer control and that reversing the course of events would involve drastic actions they are not ready to take, such as closing thousands of mosques, taking back lost territories by force, arresting thousands of suspects, and deporting foreign jihadists.

They are aware that an apparently unstoppable replacement of population is underway in Europe and that there will be more attacks. They speak as if to limit the damage, not prevent it.

European populations also see what is happening. They watch as entire areas of European cities become foreign zones on European soil; they view the attacks, the wounded, the corpses. It seems as if they have simply lost the will to fight. They seem to have chosen preemptive surrender.

British political commentator Douglas Murray writes in his important new book, The Strange Death of Europe: “Europe is committing suicide. Or at least its leaders have decided to commit suicide”. He then wonders if the Europeans will agree to go along with what is happening. For the moment, it seems, the answer is yes.

Dr. Guy Millière, a professor at the University of Paris, is the author of 27 books on France and Europe.

After hearing of the Manchester terrorist attack, politicians once more communicated their by now old-routine of “shock” and “grief” at the predictable outcome of their own policies.

Most dumbfounding of all, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said that she was watching the developments in Manchester “with grief and horror” and that she found the attack “incomprehensible”.

Every time a European leader publicly endorses Islam as a great faith, a “religion of peace”, or claims that violence in Islam is a “perversion of a great faith”, despite massive evidence to the contrary, they signal in the strongest way possible that with every devastating attack, the West is ripe for the taking.

When ISIS attacked the Bataclan Theater in Paris in November 2015, it did so because, in its own words, it was “where hundreds of pagans gathered for a concert of prostitution and vice.” A year earlier, ISIS had forbidden all music as haram (forbidden). Many Islamic scholars support the idea that Islam forbids the ‘sinful’ music of the West.

It should, therefore, not be a surprise to anybody that Islamic terrorists might target a concert by the American pop singer Ariana Grande in Manchester on May 22. In addition, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security warned last September that terrorists are focused on concerts, sporting events and outdoor gatherings because such venues “often pursue simple, achievable attacks with an emphasis on economic impact and mass casualties”.

Islamic State claimed responsibility for the Manchester suicide bombing, in which a device laced with screws and bolts was detonated. Twenty-two people, children and adults, were murdered in the explosion that ripped through the Manchester concert area; more than 50 people were wounded. While the media is describing the use of nail bombs at the concert hall as a new and surprising tactic, it is in fact an extremely old one, practiced by Arab terrorists on Israelis for decades.

MANCHESTER, ENGLAND – MAY 23: A police officer stands guard close to the Manchester Arena on May 23, 2017 in Manchester, England. (Photo by Dave Thompson/Getty Images)

Nevertheless, after hearing of the Manchester terrorist attack, politicians once more communicated their by now old-routine of “shock” and “grief” at the predictable outcome of their own policies. The usual platitudes of “thoughts and hearts” being with the victims of the attack, accompanied professed shock.

President of the European Council Donald Tusk, tweeted: “My heart is in Manchester this night. Our thoughts are with the victims.” Leader of the British Liberal Democrats, Tim Farron, condemned the “shocking and horrific” attack. British Home Secretary Amber Rudd said it was a “tragic incident”, while Labour party leader Jeremy Corbyn called it a “terrible incident”. Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said his citizens were “shocked by the news of the horrific attack in Manchester tonight”. Most dumbfounding of all, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said that she was watching the developments in Manchester “with grief and horror” and that she found the attack “incomprehensible”.

After 9/11 in the United States; the 2004 Madrid train bombings, which killed nearly 200 and wounded 2000; the 2005 attacks on London’s transit system where 56 people were killed and 700 wounded; the 2015 attacks in Paris, where ISIS killed 130 people and wounded nearly 400; the March 2016 attacks on the Brussels airport and metro station, where 31 people were killed and 300 wounded; the July 2016 attack in Nice, where 86 people, including ten children, were killed and more than 200 people wounded; the December 2016 attack in Berlin, where 12 people were killed and almost 50 wounded; the March 2017 attack on Westminster that killed three people and wounded more than 20; the April 2017 attack in Stockholm, where 5 people were killed, including one 11-year-old girl; let alone countless attacks in Israel, Western leaders have run out of all conceivable excuses to be shocked and surprised at Islamic terrorism occurring in their cities at ever-increasing frequency.

All the above-mentioned attacks are just the spectacular ones. There have been innumerable others, sometimes at the rate of several attacks per month, which barely made the headlines, such as the Muslim man who, a little over a month ago, tortured and stabbed a 66-year-old Jewish woman in Paris and then, while shouting “Allahu Akbar”, threw her out of the window; or the Paris airport attacker in March, who came “to die for Allah” and accomplished his goal without, miraculously, taking any innocent bystanders with him,

After the last spectacular terrorist atrocity in the UK, which aimed at the very heart of European democratic civilization by targeting the Houses of Parliament and Westminster Bridge, British PM Theresa May said: “It is wrong to describe this as Islamic terrorism. It is Islamist terrorism and the perversion of a great faith”.

It is impossible to fight back against that which you refuse to understand or acknowledge, but then again, European leaders seem to have no intention of fighting back, as they have evidently chosen an entirely different tactic, namely that of appeasement.

Every time a European leader publicly endorses Islam as a great faith, a “religion of peace”, or claims that violence in Islam is a “perversion of a great faith”, despite massive evidence to the contrary — the actual violent contents of the Quran and the hadiths, which include repeated exhortations to fight the “infidels” — they signal in the strongest way possible to organizations such as ISIS, Al Qaeda, Boko Haram, Hezbollah and Hamas, that with every devastating attack, the West is ripe for the taking. The terror organizations and their supporters see European leaders’ immense fear of causing even the slightest offense, despite protestations to the contrary from leaders such as Theresa May.

The fear is accompanied by a persistent resolve to pretend, at whatever cost — even that of the lives of their citizens — that Europe is not at war, even though it is blindingly clear that others are at war with it.

These terrorist organizations perceive that when ministers in countries such as Sweden, where according to news reports, 150 ISIS fighters have returned and are apparently walking around freely, propose the integration of Islamic State jihadists back into Swedish society — as a solution to terrorism! — it will not take much more effort to make these leaders submit completely, as Sweden almost certainly has. This “solution” can only work on terrorists as encouragement to carry out even more terrorism — as is overwhelmingly evident from the increasing frequency of terrorist attacks on European soil.

While European politicians, incredibly, believe that their tactics are preventing terrorism, they are in fact empowering it as much as possible: Terrorists do not react to heartfelt sympathy, teddy bears and candlelit vigils. If anything, it arguably makes them even more disgusted with Western society, which they want to transform into a caliphate under Islamic sharia law.

Politicians seem to lose sight all the time of the Islamist goal of the caliphate. Islamic terrorism is not “mindless violence” but clearly calculated terror to force the eventual submission of the targeted society. So far, with the West inert and in denial, the terrorists seem to be winning.

What, after all, is the acceptable discourse — or “narrative” — on which we can agree to speak about the attacks in Stockholm, Berlin, Nice and elsewhere? Can the discussion be allowed to include the Islamic portion? Can anyone be allowed to say that the attackers act in the name of Islam, or must we continue to present all jihadist terrorists as people suffering from any affliction apart from that one?

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Like other criticisms of Hirsi Ali, the effort was to portray her as the problem itself rather than as the response to a problem.

That this type of campaign can succeed — that speakers can be stopped from speaking in Western democracies because of the implicit or explicit threat of violence — is a problem our societies need to face.

There is a whole pile of reasons why Islamists want to stop her explanations from being aired. But why — when the attacks keep on happening — do our own societies collude with such sinister people to keep ourselves the dark?

Only a fortnight after a vehicular terrorist attack in Westminster, London, another similar attack took place in Stockholm, Sweden. On one of the city’s main shopping streets, a vehicle was once again used as a battering-ram against the bodies of members of the public. As in Nice, France. As in Berlin. As so many times in Israel.

Amid this regular news there is an air of defeatism — a terrible lack of policy and lack of solutions. How can governments stop people driving trucks into pedestrians? Is it something we must simply get used to, as France’s former Prime Minister Manuel Valls and London’s Mayor Sadiq Khan have both suggested? Must we come to recognise acts of terror as something like the weather? Or is there anything we can do to limit, if not stop, them? If so, where would we start? One place would be to have a frank public discussion about these matters. Yet, even that is easier said than done.

There is a terrible symmetry to this past week in the West. The week began with the news that the Somali-born author and human-rights activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali had been forced to cancel a speaking tour in Australia. “Security concerns” were among the given reasons. A notable aspect of this issue, which has been made public, is that one of the venues at which Hirsi Ali was due to speak was contacted last month by something calling itself “‘The Council for the Prevention of Islamophobia Incorporated”. Nobody appears to know where this “incorporated” organisation comes from, but its purported founder — Syed Murtaza Hussain — claimed that the group would bring 5000 protestors to the hall at which Hirsi Ali was scheduled to talk. This threat is reminiscent of the occasion in 2009 when the British peer, Lord Ahmed, threatened to mobilise 10,000 British Muslims to protest at the Houses of Parliament in Westminster if the Dutch politician Geert Wilders were allowed to speak. On that occasion — as on this one — the event was cancelled. Promises to mobilise thousands of angry Muslims can have such an effect. But the long-term implications often get lost in the short-term outrage.

Other attacks on Hirsi Ali began, in fact, weeks before her now-cancelled tour had been due to start. On the web, for instance, a widely-watched video was disseminated showing a group of headscarf-covered Australian Muslim women. All were attacking Hirsi Ali and protesting her appearance in the country. Addressing her directly, they complained that, “Your narrative doesn’t support our struggles. It erases them.”

Like other criticisms of Hirsi Ali, the effort was to portray her as the problem itself rather than the response to a problem. Once again, mixing up (deliberately or otherwise) the arsonist and the firefighter, such groups present a homogenous, agreed-upon opinion — or “narrative” — as the only necessary answer to any problems that may or may not exist. Hirsi Ali, according to them, thinks the “wrong” things and says the wrong things. Therefore she must be stopped.

That this type of campaign can succeed — that speakers can be stopped from speaking in Western democracies because of the implicit or explicit threat of violence — is a problem our societies need to face. But in the meantime, we also have to face the reality that a shut-down of opinion has on our public policy as well as our public discourse.

What, after all, is the acceptable discourse — or “narrative” — on which we can agree to speak about the attacks in Stockholm, Berlin, Nice and elsewhere? Can the discussion be allowed to include the Islamic portion? Can anyone be allowed to say that the attackers act in the name of Islam, or must we continue to present all jihadist terrorists as people suffering from any affliction apart from that one?

In the middle of the week, at a memorial service in Westminster Abbey, the Very Reverend John Hall, Dean of Westminster, said that the UK was “bewildered” after the terrorist attacks of a fortnight earlier. He went on in his sermon to ask:

“What could possibly motivate a man to hire a car and take it from Birmingham to Brighton to London, and then drive it fast at people he had never met, couldn’t possibly know, against whom he had no personal grudge, no reason to hate them and then run at the gates of the Palace of Westminster to cause another death? It seems likely that we shall never know.”

If it is true that our societies are “bewildered”, as the Dean says, might it be because we have not heard a wide-enough range of possible explanations for such outrages — because we have deliberately cut ourselves off, by choice,- from the warnings of ex-Muslims such as Hirsi Ali? Amid the “narratives” that are acceptable and to be tolerated, perhaps we have failed to listen to the explanations that outline the sheer scale of the religious and societal problem now in front of us?

Of course, for many Muslims, such as those critics of Hirsi Ali in Australia, there is a clear reason why they want to stop her speaking. Were people to hear her, they would realise the vast enormity of the challenge ahead of us and the depth and breadth of its nature. Her audiences would discover the defensive play around the world in which many Muslim organisations are engaged — a campaign to limit speech precisely in order to protect their own interpretation of their religion and keep out any other.

It is, however, the dissenting, silenced voices such as Hirsi Ali’s that are precisely the voices the world needs to hear at present. How tragic that a week that began with a silencing, should end with yet another all-too-predictable terrorist attack — one which Sweden will do as much to fail at comprehending as Britain did two weeks before her.

Hearing from voices such as that of Hirsi Ali could lift the fog of our “bewilderment” and explain, for instance, what does motivate some people to drive a car or truck into crowds of people going about their lives. There is a whole pile of reasons why Islamists want to stop her explanations from being aired. But why — when the attacks keep on happening — do our own societies collude with such sinister people to keep ourselves in the dark?

Instead of fighting and becoming angry, we light candles and turn off the lights in tall buildings. We vow to fight a nonspecific theory called “terrorism” instead of protecting our borders from whom and where it is precisely coming. In response to the terrorism in our cities, we call for even more multiculturalism and appeasement. We have become the pitiful we, pathetic, because of Barack Obama’s repeated sermonette of: “That’s not who we are.” Whenever suggestions were made for the urgent need to monitor some of the mosques or the young men most likely to commit future terrorist acts against us, Obama would declare: “That’s not who we are.”

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The fear and scrambling of citizens in London a few days ago was a humiliating scene, wherein a powerful city and its entire government came to a halt because of one man, an Islamist with an axe and a truck. We have seen similar things happen in other major Western cities. Humiliating the West is one of the primary goals of militant Islam. It is a victory for their deity, as demonstrated by the ubiquitous shouts of “Allahu Akhbar” prior to the terror act, a time-worn declaration of Islamic victory and humiliation of the infidel. The multiculturalists do not see it as a humiliation against us, for the us — an us with an identity — is no longer important or recognized by them. In contrast, those on the other side killing and reshaping us have a confidence and pride in their identity.

Instead of fighting and becoming angry, we light candles and turn off the lights in tall buildings. We vow to fight a nonspecific theory called “terrorism” instead of protecting our borders from whom and where it is precisely coming. In response to the terrorism in our cities, we call for even more multiculturalism and appeasement. We have become the pitiful we, pathetic, because of Barack Obama’s repeated sermonette of: “That’s not who we are.” Whenever suggestions were made for the urgent need to monitor some of the mosques or the young men most likely to commit future terrorist acts against us, Obama would declare: “That’s not who we are.”

When it comes to Islamic terror or shariah imposition, Obama and other globalists preach a type of defenselessness and impotence: something we have to abide. For many liberals, virtue signaling, the epitome of vanity, is more important than saving lives, even the lives of their countrymen.

Heroic people, however, know exactly who they are: They are those who defend their country and families from terrorism, death and injury. People with an identity know who they are and thus fight for it. Transnationalists don’t… and, with sophistry, try to stop others from doing so.

As uber-multiculturalists, these globalist leaders are making a nation’s accommodation to Islam, and the incorporation of Islamic ways and demands, the litmus test of multicultural compliance. Islam is their fast-track tool for transforming Western societies and is being catapulted by them into religious and cultural stardom. It is being romanticized as the new global commonality and outlook, a catchall for all that is right-minded and progressive. By being the new “victim” of Western intolerance and oppression, Islam is automatically elevated and ennobled as something enlightened and most tolerant, especially by those abandoning and running from their Christian ancestry and upbringing and seeking an exotic system in which to pour all their utopian and rebellious yearnings.

Many in the political class demonizing Americanism and nationalism are celebrating transnationalism, which is being pushed today by global multiculturalists. Until now, Western countries retained with pride their distinctive culture and norms, while recognizing and enjoying the varied qualities found in nations different than their own. Transnationalism is radically different. It wishes to denude each Western country of its uniqueness and severely marginalize that segment of the population wishing to preserve and live by the historic values and customs of their country. It is banal uniformity on a global scale, often a consequence of embarrassment and repudiation of anything overtly Christian or Old Testament.

Transnationalism takes power away from a country’s people and imposes laws and norms from above by an almost interchangeable global ruling class which treats its country’s patriots as malcontents and second class, as “unenlightened” citizens entitled to fewer freedoms than anti-nationalists or preferred minorities. The ruling class has more sympathy and identity with the ruling class of other countries than with citizens of their own country. It is cosmopolitanism run riot, so that American liberals, for example, feel a kinship more with Parisians than those from Peoria.

Whereas until very recently, highly patriotic leaders were chosen to lead countries, under the mantle of transnationalism leaders are advanced who downplay and characterize as “extreme” the patriotic members within society. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton in America, Angela Merkel in Germany, as well as the Scandinavian and Flemish leaders, the EU and the Hague, are representative of those in an expanding political class and club who see their power deriving from a global multiculturalism that marginalizes conservative voters to ineffective fringes.

These leaders reinforce and aid each other by speaking to voters beyond their own country. They speak of the need of voters elsewhere to elect those candidates who will be part of a globalist order and fraternity upon which rests the “guarantee of peace, harmony, prosperity, and environmental purity”. Transnationalism is the age-old universalist and socialist dystopia come true, just under a new nomenclature. Those opposed are labeled xenophobic; those questioning open borders are labeled racist. No one has a right any longer to an opinion except those issuing leftist, transnational creeds. These accusations, the name calling, are some of the most powerful weapons in the globalist arsenal.

Many making the accusations of xenophobia live in rarified societies and neighborhoods or in high-end and fashionable apartment buildings with security guards and doormen, immune from the consequences of Open Borders, loss of manual jobs, overseas nation-building, and the harmful effects arising from perfunctory background checks and superficial vetting.

It is not American nationalism that warrants our alarm, rather transnationalism and fierce multiculturalism. In the name of faux morality and twisted tolerance it seeks to erase the identity, touchstones, and values that made us who we are. It imperils our future.